From Field Wheat to Precision Gene Editing

Gene Editing: From Field-Grown Wheat to Precision Genomes

If time could speak, it would probably find humans quite amusing, for we often get things right first and only later figure out why.

Thousands of years ago, humans had no concept of genes. There was no DNA, no mutations, no Cas9. Yet somehow, everyone was engaged in the same endeavor—unconsciously harnessing natural variation, selecting traits from the chaos of nature.

Take, for example, that wheat that would not shatter its ears. In the wild, it was destined to die out, a casualty of nature’s ruthless selection.

But to humans, this “non-shattering” trait was a boon, making harvest far easier. They transplanted it around their villages, nurtured it carefully, and awaited the first mature seeds.
Bit by bit, this mutation—highly disadvantageous to the wheat itself, yet profoundly beneficial to humans—was preserved.

This was perhaps the earliest form of “artificial selection,” and with it, agriculture truly began to take root.

Figure 1. Wild-type teosinte (left) and today’s widely cultivated maize crop (right)

The two hardly look like they belong to the same species. During the domestication of maize, the change in ear size was even more remarkable.

At that time, people could not explain such phenomena, and so the gods naturally became the default answer.

But in more rational Greece, thinkers like Democritus and Hippocrates began to seek scientific explanations for why traits could be inherited. They proposed the concept of pangenesis, an attempt to give this “gift of the gods” a rational basis—the theory of blending particles.

This idea persisted into modern times, providing a conceptual foundation for Darwin, who formulated his theory of evolution. Darwin imagined that traits mixed and transmitted through mating much like pigments blending together.

Yet doubts quickly arose: if inheritance truly worked like ink dropped into milk, then even the most pronounced variations would be rapidly diluted and vanish. In that case, the cumulative changes that evolution relies upon could never occur.

In an era utterly ignorant of genes, conflicting voices clashed relentlessly, striving to unravel the true nature of inheritance.

Figure 2. The contradiction between the theory of pangenesis (left) and the theory of natural selection (right)

According to the theory of pangenesis, tiny variations in the parents’ gemmules would be “diluted” during reproduction and thus disappear. This stands in conflict with the theory of natural selection, which holds that even small hereditary variations can be passed on— forming the material basis of natural selection.

Time seemed to sit back and watch all of this unfold, as if observing a millennium-long debate play out on a distant stage.

Inheritance operated in darkness, and humanity made its choices in that same darkness.

It was not until the rise of modern genetics that a light was finally switched on, revealing the true logic behind that ancient “non-shattering wheat.”

In reality, humans had been making use of genetic variation for thousands of years — long before we understood what we were actually doing.

For a very long time, we were doing the right things without knowing why.

Today, when we talk about CRISPR, people call it “ the scalpel of God. ”

Yet this history quietly reminds us that gene editing did not descend out of nowhere; it is the natural extension of centuries of observation, trial, and accumulated experience.

We did not suddenly acquire this “scalpel.”
We merely came to understand how it works — moving from intuitive selection to precise editing.

At EDITGENE, our custom gene knockout cell line services utilize an advanced CRISPR/Cas9 system to support research teams in bridging basic research and clinical applications. Feel free to reach out anytime to design a gene editing plan tailored to your research needs.